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How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

campfirelabs.co

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Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#241

Post by zorga »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #240
zorga wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's so much more to it than 'people producing wealth'. That's pretty much going away - almost all manufacturing is already automated, and the rest will soon be so. That's not going away, automation doesn't mean people aren't producing wealth, it just means said wealth is produced by fewer people but those robots belong to someone and its output is rightfully theirs. Just because a robot produced something doesn…

Strawmen aren't helping here. "The labor of the productive" is becoming a very small set. Clearly they'll have to be motivated differently. Obviously the way forward isn't breaking the system with a hammer, so lets stop going back to that. Incentive to live is different from incentive to work. Look at open source; look at researchers in universities. Wealth is not the motivator there, yet there's tremendous productiv…

> Incentive to live is different from incentive to work.

Incentive to live is the primary but not only incentive to work. Wealth is what you need when you're trying to survive, only after that's achieved do other incentives matters.

> The meaning of wealth is going to have to change.

No, wealth is wealth, it's just stuff, that's not going to change. You need stuff to survive, food, shelter, etc, that's not ever going to change.

What's going to change is how wealth is distributed, that's where the conversation is.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#242

Post by jazzdev »

calgoo wrote: post #212
kbsletten wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you consent to learn about something you don't know about? This is a very different idea to me and I'm trying to understand where you're coming from.

IMO, if i did not sign up for information regarding a product, its spam. If i want something, i will go look for it. I don't want random strangers trying to sell me something, especially when they have no idea what i need.

What if the random stranger is telling you about something you do want, but didn't know you wanted?

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#243

Post by brownbat »

peteretep wrote: post #64
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this new trend of belittling accomplishments down to luck? At the very least, thousands of people had the same opportunity to do what your boss did. And that's if we take your word that this is all he did, and he didn't negotiate at all or spend any time researching what products to sell, or take a loss in the beginning to provide good customer service for future gain. Even seeing the opportunity is a skill i…

> What is this new trend of belittling accomplishments down to luck? Many accomplishments are mostly luck? Japan Rugby beat South Africa in a 7s match a while ago. Are the players now entitled to call themselves better than those on the South African team? I mean, sure they could, but it would be obviously false, and nothing of value is gained. This reduces all the way down to “accomplishing” choosing lottery numbers…

> Many accomplishments are mostly luck?

This got me wondering how we might prove which accomplishments are luck vs skill.

Michael Mauboussin's 2012 book dives pretty far into separating luck from skill, worth checking out, or at least the more interesting online reviews / interviews.[0] It covers sports, investing, etc.

You can control the random seed in some games (duplicate bridge), but more often, you just want an enormous number of samples.[1]

Even with large sample sizes there are still debates (poker [2, 3], investing [4, 5]).

So if we come back and want to assess one individual life? No idea how confidently we can sort out how much was luck and how much was skill for anyone at n = 1.

It's like watching one poker hand. We can point to the cards. We can point out that they didn't make incredibly rookie mistakes. Beyond that? Who knows.

But then... I guess you could say... The guy who has played a million hands of poker is more skilled than the guy who played one.

By analogy, how good at this can any of us really be?

-or-

We'd all definitely be better at life if we had a few more tries.

:D

Late comment, just had been mulling it, wanted to park it somewhere.

Resources:

[0] https://www.wired.com/2012/11/luck-and-skill-untangled-qa-wi...

[1] True score theory: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/truescor.php

[2] https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1130/finance-carnival-ari...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jan/08/online-poker-b...

[4] Investors might have incredible careers only to face allegations of survivorship bias. I had some anecdotal source here but lost it over the last day of sleeping on this. Sorry. Here's a wikipedia page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[5] https://mathinvestor.org/2018/08/mutual-fund-performance-and...

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#244

Post by Skunkleton »

mbrock wrote: post #156
JDiculous wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. Pay is good, work can be interesting, work-life balance and job security are relatively good, but being a developer never gave me any sense of real fulfillment. I'm not making any serious difference in anyone's life, and my six figure salary could be replaced with a team of eastern Europeans who could probably get more done at a fraction of the cost. If I were to die tomorrow, it wouldn't really…

Doctors and journalists use a lot of software. Everyone uses computers all the time. Making software better can be a very high leverage activity. Sometimes fixing one bug can save hours of work for a whole bunch of people. Right? So it basically just depends on what you’re working on. And there are also doctors, journalists, and perhaps especially politicians whose daily work doesn’t contribute very meaningfully to a…

Absolutely. But selfishly speaking I hardly ever get to hear about successes of my code.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#245

Post by Skunkleton »

rahoulb wrote: post #145
Skunkleton wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth. My job is "important", but at the same time I don't think anyone's life would be measurably worse if I didn't do it (besides mine lol). IMO it is kind of a problem with software in general. It is getting me down honestly; I could use some advice.

Imagine yourself sat in a big chair aged 110 years old. And you’re thinking to yourself “I’m so glad I did X”. What is X? (It’s tough, I’m 44 and I only figured it out last year, but I didn’t do it this way) Now, how can you do X? Is it a side hustle? Is it a spare time thing? Does it need millions of dollars? Does it need you to quit your job and change direction completely? Can you get to X in five years? If so, wh…

That seems like good advice. Having some sort of thing to work towards seems helpful.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#246

Post by blunte »

rchaud wrote: post #237
blunte wrote: post #69

This is great and educational. But I've noticed that many (most?) of the successful side projects were started by people who had some sales and marketing experience. Sales first, tech second (or third). If you want other people to buy, rent, invest, etc., you have to be able to find the right people and communicate with them in a way that will lead them to become your customers/partners. Unfortunately, I doubt many o…

> Unfortunately, I doubt many of us with CompSci degrees and years/decades of experience have those sales and marketing skills. The history of enterprise tech is strewn with stories about that first big deal happening before the tech was even ready. Bill Gates and Paul Allen's meeting with IBM is probably the best known one. Hell, even Steve Jobs, with all of Apple's power, publicly pitched a ghetto-rigged iPhone bec…

I think you've nailed it regarding problem-solving mentality and not overstating capabilities. And yes, I've sat right next to a salesperson and had to swallow my tongue while they told a customer that we could deliver something that we absolutely could not.

Fortunately, some of the side projects I've seen that have become successful don't appear to be overselling themselves based on their websites. So there must be room for success just by learning a process of how to get noticed by the right potential customers, and then plainly speaking what the product is.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#247

Post by molticrystal »

ForHackernews wrote: post #139

> found a virtual assistant on oDesk named Jonathan Am I correct in thinking this "virtual" assistant is not a bot, but just a human hired remotely?

Virtual indeed refers to their presence. While to you, you know they are remote, for any outward facing function though, such as with customer interaction, ideally they'll seem like they are no further then the next office or department of your company.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#248

Post by rahoulb »

Skunkleton wrote: post #245
rahoulb wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine yourself sat in a big chair aged 110 years old. And you’re thinking to yourself “I’m so glad I did X”. What is X? (It’s tough, I’m 44 and I only figured it out last year, but I didn’t do it this way) Now, how can you do X? Is it a side hustle? Is it a spare time thing? Does it need millions of dollars? Does it need you to quit your job and change direction completely? Can you get to X in five years? If so, wh…

That seems like good advice. Having some sort of thing to work towards seems helpful.

Breaking it down into achievable chunks is important too. The paradox is you can’t plan too far ahead as life will get in the way. But if you don’t have a direction of travel you forget where you’re going.

Hence the five/three/one year ambitions followed by a twelve week plan.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#249

Post by devdas »

rchaud wrote: post #232
devdas wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consent.

If the address on an email list was obtained via some other party that the address was voluntarily submitted to (say, a service with a ToS that included sharing your email address with "partners"), then consent was already established. Doesn't mean it isn't still shady.

Unless it was specified for what purpose the email was obtained, consent isn't established.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#250

Post by devdas »

everdev wrote: post #78
CJKinni wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how it’s belittling to acknowledge luck as a factor among many in success while also acknowledging the non-luck factors. You can be proud of your accomplishments while still acknowledging the influence of luck your success.

I think it's the difference between what comes first, the work or the luck and what's the dominant force. If you study hard and get good grades, you might find yourself in a position where someone needs to hire for a role that you're already prepared for. Sure, there's luck in bumping into that person, but you worked hard to be able to take advantage of opportunities, so I'd say luck had very little to do with your s…

The dominant trait was rich, well connected parents?
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